Magnesium yoyos

Can you please tell me your experiences with magnesium yoyos? Are they very scratch resistant (from wedding rings etc). Do they warp at all upon hard impact?

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While I don’t actually own any, I do know that magnesium tends to be like ceramic almost in texture as the pure alkaline metal itself would be too prone to tarnish and/or spark and ignite when walking the dog (fun fact: pure magnesium reacting with oxygen is the reaction that supplies the flash in a flash bang). But from what I would assume it would be incredibly hard and more prone to shattering or cracking instead of warping.

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I imagine it would be liks throwing a hard rock if it’s a monomaterial, and a hard rock with metal rings if multi-material.

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I want experiences, not imaginings.

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I had a Duncan mg that was powder coated that took a lot of hits. The exposed metal just oxidizes but otherwise it’s just like any other al yoyo.

Also the available coating right now are not very durable and exposed mg just oxidizes.

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Commercially I do not know of a project from a manufacturer that has been successful enough to keep it in production.

Duncan MG, was ok with matte finish but ran on spacers so beating seats were not impacted by tolerances of the finish. The power coated ones had issues with cap fitting and even spacers fitting. Matte finished was discontinued first, which suggested problems.

Big problems lie in finishing. Yoyofriends have been pretty open with their issues and the large amount of cost to produce including scrapped batches. Latest effort to moon rock coat it don’t appear to be fixing problems without creating new ones.

Basically raw magnesium oxides poorly. It needs to be sealed. It’s hard to seal without uneven build up which can negatively affect fit of bearing and even round shape of yo-yo and weight distribution.

I think you need to be brave, have a solution or be in denial to make a mg yo-yo.

Godspeed to all who embark on the journey

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I have a yoyofriends Cloudstrike.

Its really good and yoyofriends made it so that the design really gives the best weight profile you can get out of a mono-metal magnesium. The weight profile of magnesium is really unique (its floatier than aluminum and the weight feels like its in-between the weight of aluminum and plastic).

Because of this if you want to try a new material for yoyos I think you will enjoy picking up a magnesium throw.

If you are looking for a durable yoyo don’t go with magnesium, . I never take the yoyo any where and I always make sure its over carpet. For durability you should probably get a fancy bimetal or Titanium

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Not sure if youve seen Turning Points Magnesium x Stainless Steel throws. They are godly and they seem to produce quite a few Magnesium throws. My favroties are the Alnilam and Gachiska. The finish feels like velvet almost and i LOVE it.

I havnt dinged one yet so cant really speak to that but these guys seem to have the Magnesium game dialed in. Dead smooth and the coolest weight distribution due to the major weight differences in material

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This doesn’t really address what @yyfben2.deactivated mentioned. He was stating that the issue lies in the difficulty of getting the bearing seat sealed properly during production without oxidation creating a weird/uneven fit for the bearing. So producing them tends to be troublesome.

Whatever coating they’re using doesn’t look like it’s applied to the bearing post, but I can’t imagine they’d just leave it as raw magnesium… but maybe they do. No clue! All I have to go on is this picture of a gachiska.

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Ahhhhh my mistake entirely, i never actually unscrewed either of mine, i was more so addressing the part that Turning Point has Magnesium down to where they regularly release magnesium throws and ive never had issues with the bearing seats or anything like that

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Maybe tangentially related to this thread, this is my pencil sharpener. It’s made of magnesium (with a steel blade), raw mg turns to crap really fast. I have to wonder why this was even made out of magnesium. But it certainly functions as a pencil sharpener!

Maybe I’m also speaking about yoyos, I’ll let you decide how to interpet this.

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Hey I am a manufacturing engineering student, magnesium has some very interesting mechanical properties. For one comparing it with aluminum it has a much lower density, which means it is generally much lighter, but it also has a much higher elastic modulus, which means it would require a greater amount of stress to deform it permanently. As a rule of thumb, magnesium has a super high shock resistance (in this case impact resistance). So it is a good choice against stuff like dinging. When treated properly it is also very scratch resistant

As a summary, magnesium has great applications when you need something that is lightweight, but won’t deform easily, but the reason it is not more widely used is because it is really extremely hard to manufacture, so companies that use magnesium will do it only when high performance is absolutely necessary. Tbh I am doubtful that any yoyo company at the moment has the manufacturing ability to produce a magnesium yoyo that can be durable for a long time. Maybe in the future we might be able to do it though.

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I really like my Duncan Mg’s. They do look nasty if you chip the bass boat metal flake coating, but they feel better to me than Ti yo-yos.

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Ah the dream customer.

Imagine asking the buyer of a $10 yo-yo to behave like that!

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…. Like plastic :innocent:

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i still have an 07 and an 08 888 from you thats never been unscrewed, smooth as butter to this day haha :blush::pray:

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I have not. I know it was a bear of a project.

Is that a steel insert bearing seat?

My experience with Magnesium has been the Death Robot by Kyo. This OneDrop manufactured (now I know) was truly both innovative as well as expensive at the time.

As noted; the texture of the Mg (magnesium) is almost chalky due to the anodizing-process. The play characteristics, however, were truly unique. The lightness of the Mg made the relatively heavy stainless-steel rings become the dominant feeling. It almost felt like you were playing the rings themselves because the Mg was so light.

The one negative was that the chalky-texture was a magnet for oil, dirt and grime. The yo-yo was able to be cleaned with soap and water; but it never had that magnificent white gleam afterwards. Overall; a yo-yo I was glad to have the privelege to play and was ultimately happy to pass it on to another to experience; for what I paid.

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^ the brave!

The fact there hasn’t been a onedrop Ti suggests they know better than to make more. Maybe they will forget the headaches and go again!

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Magicyoyo recently posted that they can do “Ceramic sand blast finish” on aluminum alloy AND magnesium alloy. No idea of the QC but this whole thing sounds like a chemistry issues that WILL be solved sooner rather than later.

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